The Wall Street Journal reported (1) that AT&T saw wireless networks about to drown under a deluge of data. To see Youtube content uploaded form an iPhone or Slingbox rerouting a favourite television program to your smart phone gives mobile network operators the shivers. Skype over 3G in the meantime gives sleepless nights, not because of surging megabyte floods but due to nightmares of considerable voice and roaming revenues washing away.

Not easy to plan and engineer “managed transitions” under those circumstances. Defensive moves such as punitive surcharges when the customer exceeds the rather meagre number of megs most plans allow for, or forcing handset suppliers to block favourite applications, will not make you particularly popular with a young and demanding customer base who consider communication a fundamental right. Capacity increase is the obvious answer but requires investment. HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) was supposed to provide short to medium term relief to bandwidth stress while LTE would lead to the nirvana of unrestricted and presumably affordable wireless broadband access. In the meantime the villain of 3G and 4G protagonists remains mobile Wimax which could provide a viable alternative, opening their lucrative market to unwelcome newcomers.

Faced with deluges of data and floods of handsets and applications, a drought of IP addresses might seem trivial.

Over the last three years growing demand for mobile data has been met by rapid fire announcements and deployments of HSDPA (2) and HSUPA (3) and now of souped up versions like HSPA+ (4). The only glitch was that this carefully planned evolutionary path did not anticipate the iPhone and the cohort of smartphones or the nascent Netbook phenomenon. Once again, a cocktail of creativity and new technology provided the proverbial discontinuity. Only possible answer: bring the Long Term nearer and deliver LTE now! Verizon, Teliasonera, NTT Docomo and other heavyweights now plan LTE deployment starting in 2010! As of May 27th thirty one operators are already be committed and the race is on to gain a competitive advantage. Ten of them plan initial commercial deployment by end of next year!

‘IPv6 Transition Considerations for LTE and Evolved Packet Core’ is hardly the title for a novel to read on your next plane trip’ but time has come to go through this excellent white paper (5) published in March by 3G Americas.
As their president, Chris Pearson, stated: “The time is now for the entire converged wireless ecosystem of operators, vendors and regulators to fully plan and implement IPv6 transition strategies to ensure our great industry continues to prosper” adding that as today’s four billion wireless subscribers transition to Internet-capable mobile devices, the need for IPv6 addresses becomes more apparent.

Well, time to act might come sooner than anticipated; while many remain unfazed by the imminent prospect of a severe drought of internet addresses, the very idea of drowning under a deluge of data is definitely not palatable. Mobile Network Operators need LTE. LTE needs IPv6. Ergo they need IPv6. Does the syllogism hold?

Maybe 3G Americas and GSMA should consider sending a friendly reminder to their constituents, as ARIN did to theirs last month (6). Some constituents are member of both and if they fear neither drought nor deluge, well..

Yves Poppe
June 2009

(1) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124344227596159029.html
(2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSDPA
(3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Speed_Uplink_Packet_Access
(4) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolved_HSPA
(5) http://www.3gamericas.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=pressreleasedisplay&pressreleaseid=2150
(6) http://www.arin.net/knowledge/about_resources/ceo_letter.pdf

USA-Canada World Championship hockey games never fail to elicit great excitement. In the IPv6 adoption world league however, the US seems to have a convincing lead over their northern neighbour but the game is not over yet, here come the Canucks.

Internet evolution, and IPv6 in particular, were the major themes at the issac (1) (ICT Standards Advisory Council of Canada) Plenary meeting (2) in Ottawa mid April. Presentation of the Government of Canada IPv6 transition Strategy, including timelines, was undoubtedly the highlight of the day. Leveraging the Australian Government IPv6 transition model, the Canadian Federal Government envisages three phases in the transition; preparation (jan 2009- dec 2010), transition (jan 2011-dec 2013) and implementation (January 2014-dec 2015).

Surprising? Not really. In its quiet ways , Canada has pioneered IPv6 since its early days. Canarie (3), Canada’s national Research and Education Network, co-funded the Chicago 6TAP (4) while the Canadian freenet6 (5) tunneling service has provided more than 150,000 IPv6 over IPv4 tunnels and was, for a while, the world’s premier IPv6 transit point. The first intercontinental native IPv6 connectivity was tried out between the CRC (6) in Ottawa and Berkom in Berlin, Germany, back in 1998. Teleglobe, now part of Tata Communications, became founding member of the IPv6 Forum in 1999 and has been offering commercial IPv6 connectivity since 2004.

The Government’s IPv6 mettle will likely be tested in the upcoming GENS (7) Government Enterprise Network Services calls for tender. The goal is ambitious with the consolidation and convergence of the Government’s current 124 separate networks. Some laggards on the network and equipment supply side will likely lobby to say that IPv6 is not that urgent and that they will support it in the future anyways while some consultants will see, in many years of transition, many years of contracts.

Some of us, in the discussion period at the Ottawa issac plenary, emphasized the need for some early measurable deliverables such as IPv6 accessibility of selected public Government websites. Interesting to note that ARIN’s most recent letter (8), to ISP CEO’s, also considers publicly accessible resources such as external web servers and e-mail servers a logical place to start.

The IPv6 puck rebounds, is passed from behind the internet, he shoots, he ….

Yves Poppe

May 2009

1. http://www.isacc.ca/isacc/english/

2. http://www.isacc.ca/isacc/english/meetings/index.jsp

3. http://www.canarie.ca/about/index.html

4. http://www.6tap.net/

5. http://go6.net/4105/freenet.asp

6. http://crc.ca/en/html/crc/home/home

7. http://www.tpsgc-pwgsc.gc.ca/apropos-about/fi-fs/rceg-gens-eng.html

8. http://www.arin.net/knowledge/about_resources/ceo_letter.pdf

Is the glass half full or half empty? The human reflex of selective deafness to information or arguments countering  one’s established believes lives on.  The ISOC organized lunchtime IPv6 panel (1) at IETF 74 in San Francisco   illustrates the point. The half full perception is exemplified by one write-up (2) on the event, the half-empty by another (3). A third write-up (4) seems to be the closest to what constitutes objectivity,  uncorrected for any confirmation bias of my own. 

Natural pessimists continue to hide behind lack of business case, ROI, lack of customer demand, cost, complexity.  Mention lack of backward compatibility and it appears under title of “fatal flow for IPv6” (5), mention a “broccoli approach to IPv6 implementation” and the bias will depend on whether or not one likes broccoli.   When forced  to swallow, they will probably go on a diet of hard to digest transition technologies and NATcho’s.

Natural optimists see a new world of applications and phenomenal opportunities stirring under the surface of the internet.  They integrate IPv6 as part of their network equipment and service upgrade cycles and consider new application domains to satisfy humanity’s insatiable hunger to  search, consume, produce and exchange information anytime, anywhere .  When Google turned on AAAA’s for Google Maps, IPv6 traffic tripled within days. Trapped underground IPv6 lakes start to break the surface of an increasingly arid and parched IPv4 internet. 

Maybe there are is a genetic base and evolutionary benefit for our confirmation bias (6)? 

Yves Poppe
April 2009

1. http://www.isoc.org/isoc/conferences/ipv6panel/
2. http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2009/03/internet-society-promotes-ipv6-ietf-extends-ipv4-lifetime.ars
3. http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/032009-ipv6-business-case.html
4. http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/internet/0,39044908,62052667,00.htm?scid=rss_z_nw
5. http://www.cw.com.hk/content/fatal-flaw-ipv6-its-not-backwards-compatible
6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

Anything to be aware of on layer 2 when activating dual stack ? IPv4 and IPv6 should after all peacefully and safely coexist on the same network as each version has a specific layer 2 ethernet type, 0×0800 for IPv4 while IPv6 responds to 0×86dd. The value of this field tells the node which layer 3 protocol follows in the ethernet frame. Is this new? Not really, this was defined in RFC 2464 (1) in December 1998, more than a decade ago. The IEEE Ethernet Field Registrar (2) issues and maintains the list (3) of allocated Ethernet types. And 0×0800, the IPv4 ethernet type, result of the venerable RFC894 (4), will be a quarter century old next month! This RFC defines a standard protocol for the ARPA – internet community (sic).

Remarkable how Ethernet has evolved and been widely adopted over this period extending its reach from LAN to MAN to WAN and from 10meg to 10gigE. One has to credit the IEEE for quite an efficient job as a standards body.

Over in the IP world, this month of March will see IETF 74 (5) meet in San Francisco and continue to ponder transitions, address translations, double translations, even carrier grade translations. In the meantime the IPv4 pool has shrivelled to 32 /8’s in IANA’s free pool and in Manila last week the policy session (6) at the APNIC meeting further looked at ways to cut the remaining IPv4 address pool in ever smaller pieces and even allocating them for shorter time frames to somehow delay the inevitable. The Regional Internet Registries now even have a mechanism to equitably share recovered, reclaimed and returned pieces of IPv4 address property. APNIC has even adopted a proposition on how to parcel out crumbs of the very last /8 they will get allocated.

A modern day Géricault might start painting the “Radeau du IPv4” . I felt reassured however by the growing number of IPv6 address allocations by RIR’s to local registries and ISP’s as we saw in the NRO update (7). Let’s just start using them a bit faster and pity the poor souls who will be left on the IPv4 raft .

Yves Poppe

March 2009

1. http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2464.txt

2. http://standards.ieee.org/regauth/ethertype/type-tut.html

3. http://standards.ieee.org/regauth/ethertype/eth.txt

4. http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc894.txt

5. http://tools.ietf.org/agenda/74/calendar

6. http://www.apnic.net/policy/proposals/index.html

7. http://meetings.apnic.net/program/amm/pan-nro-stats.ppt

At Cisco Networkers (1)  in Barcelona earlier this week,  some of us saw a dragon try to wiggle out of its shell, provided you connected in IPv6 that is.  A smile to Kame (2), the turtle which only danced under a IPv6 caress.

Networkers 2009 saw more than 3000 attendants and a good complement of IPv6 presentations highlighted by a high powered plenary panel  on the status of IPv6. It was chaired by Pat Calhoun, Cisco CTO, with outside participation from Google, Archrock, Spacenet, the European Commission, Free.fr( 3) and Tata Communications.

Anything to remember from all this IPv6 talk early in this new year? Well, if you turn it on, they come, both endusers and traffic that is. Since Free (3) turned on IPv6 on their Freebox last year in France, more than 200,000 of their subscribers activated it.  Google sees growing numbers of IPv6 searches,  ISP’s see growing IPv6 traffic…

Granted, it’s still a trickle compared to IPv4,  but the chances to see the internet  facing collapse when running out of IPv4 addresses or  become clogged with NAT-plaque , are receding.   A growing number of ISP’s are upgrading their networks to assure the continuing health of the internet and their revenues, content is on its way as are new green field application domains.  Judging from the numbers who attended the IPv6 sessions this week, not too many really want to stay behind that much longer.

We have not  yet seen the full power of the Internet Dragon,  but this week, it was stirring under its shell.

Yves Poppe
February 2009

(1) https://www.cisconetworkers2009.com/eventlink/cybercafe/home.ww

(2) http://www.kame.net/

(3) http://www.free.fr/adsl/

We don’t give enough credit to people who will sacrifice themselves trying to plug the IPv4 dam with some NAT-putty. They even dream of  a  NAT66 filled afterlife.  The growing IPv6 traffic trickle was given evidence at the recent RIPE 57 (1) meeting in Dubai in a number of presentations, including a most edifying Google presentation (2).  Noteworthy to see France with a 0.65% IPv6 penetration, largely courtesy of free.fr (2), a major ISP offering an extremely successful triple play service based on their customer premise freebox which they decided to also IPv6 enable. And, oh yes, 95% of French IPv6 traffic is native.  In the meantime it felt good to see the US and Canada doing quite well with a 0.45% penetration. Major difference with France is that here in North America 95% of the traffic was 6to4. Most likely the popularity of Mac’s and the Airport Extreme has something to do with it.  When ranked by operating system, Mac OS leads in IPv6 penetration with 2.44% followed by Linux and Vista while XP and Windows 2000 are negligible.
The rather modest showing of IPv6 powerhouse Japan with only 0.15% IPv6 penetration was rather surprising and warrants some further analysis   The other real surprise was to see Russia claiming the overall number one ranking with 0.76% penetration!

Besides access and OS support, the third variable in the equation is the IPv6 routing between ISP’s and their respective Autonomous System Numbers. There was a lot of speculation about the “brokenness” of IPv6 . Google measurements show 0.09% of clients lost and 150ms extra latency; some way to go but not that bad and improving. Major tier1 ISP’s including AS6453 are  dual stack  and peer with each other in both IPv4 and IPv6; we also see a growing number of  IP transit customers upgrading their connections to dual stack.

When the fourth variable, IPv6 accessible content, will be in place the dam burst will come tantalizingly closer.  IPv6 accessible websites and e-mail are not commonplace yet but slowly growing.  And interesting phenomena happen to CDN’s when issuing AAAA addresses to content:  immediate increases in IPv6 traffic are visible!

2009 will see the seeping become leaking, 2010 will witness the first serious cracks, 2011 will see the dam buckle, 2012…

In the meantime I wish you all a happy and IPv6 filled New Year.

Yves Poppe
December 2008

(1) http://www.ripe.net/ripe/meetings/ripe-57/
(2) Global IPv6 statistics by Lorenzo Colliti
(3) http://www.free.fr/adsl/index.html

As we continue our ride toward the exhaustion of IPv4 addresses, Regional Internet Registries public discussion groups such as the ARIN PPML (1) mailing list remain filled with endless discussions on how large swaths of allocated IPv4 addresses are unused, should be reclaimed or recycled one way or another, maybe be put on the free market and sold to the highest bidder or parsed out in more egalitarian controlled ways.

Although everyone now accepts the notion of IPv4 address exhaustion, it seems to be for some an invisible glass wall and for others a gold brick wall worth the death of the internet to get a piece of it. For others still, the wall will never be reached, just as Achilles will never overtake the tortoise or the arrow never reach its target. Our modern day Zeno’s (2) seem to believe that by adding layer upon layer of NAT’s, the address exhaustion wall will not be reached in their lifetime or at least until their retirement. To prove them wrong could still take some time. After all it took about two thousand years to see Cantor (3) prove old Zeno wrong.

In the meantime, the upcoming IETF in Minneapolis (4) will see a half dozen transition mechanisms in search of legitimacy, their respective champions passionate to see their approach prevail with the minimum of alterations. Add another two years or so before RFC status and implementation in vendor software…. A chance of a wall somewhere on our path in the meantime?

Luckily, while some figure out the essence of that wall and clever ways to soften and cushion a seemingly inevitable impact, some are busy trying to move it inch by inch out of the way. The routing table has reached a thousand IPv6 prefixes (5), the number of devices bearing the IPv6 Forum Gold Label (6) is zeroing on 300. The ARIN/CAIDA survey (7) of more than 1000 respondents show nearly half of them plan IPv6 transition and 10% of them cite difficulty to get sufficient IPv4 address space as a motivation.

Zeno might still get his revenge.

Yves Poppe
November 2008

1. http://lists.arin.net/mailman/listinfo/arin-ppml

2. http://www.mathacademy.com/pr/prime/articles/zeno_tort/index.asp

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Cantor

4. http://www.ietf.org/meetings/73/

5. IPv6 routing table report by CJ Aronson

6. http://www.ipv6ready.org/frames.html

7. IPv6 penetration study by KC Claffy

Presentations at successive IPv6 related forums, summits and other conferences tend to become rather repetitive and some even in need of an urgent slide dust-off. Luckily some fresh perspectives emerge occasionally such as at the Taiwan IPv6 Summit (1) early September. Being in the market for a new home router, I could not but pay attention to a presentation (2) by D-Link extolling their IPv6 support for home routers! Back here in Canada, the local D-Link site (3) provided me some info on IPv6 but only for DGS series (3), nothing yet for the wireless home routers I am looking for. I checked also Linksys but found nothing at all on their IPv6 support. Granted, my high-speed internet provider, Videotron, our local cable co, does not support IPv6 yet but they claim it is coming but not sure exactly when. Still I’d prefer to buy an IPv6 ready box, even if I have to continue some tunnelling for a while. Could our dear home router suppliers start to use the IPv6 ready logo as a competitive differentiator in the market place? After all, the people selling flat screen TV’s in the same stores will recommend HD1080p models at a premium to be future proof. Why not do the same praising the day IPv6 and its virtues will permeate the internet and its applications.

It so happens that Montreal hosts an IETF IPv4-IPv6 coexistence meeting (5) this coming week to iron out IPv6 transition issues and mechanisms and that my internet service supplier will also be represented. While “Real” IPv6 connectivity in my neighbourhood might still be some time off, I feel it is getting closer. In the meantime I think I’ll wait for that IPv6 ready logo before buying a new home router. To his credit, the sales rep at Future Shop had vaguely heard about IPv6 and intelligently suggested that I could probably upload a new firmware version later on; true but still, I prefer that “IPv6 ready” gold label; would make me more comfortable, just like that HD1080 label on the television set.

Yves Poppe
October 2008

1. http://www.ipv6.org.tw/summit2008/En/Index.htm
2. http://www.ipv6.org.tw/summit2008/En/Preliminary%20Program3.htm
3. http://www.dlink.ca/
4. http://www.dlink.ca/business/IPv6/
5. http://trac.tools.ietf.org/area/int/trac/wiki/v4v6interim